benis, do you know this because you've tracked it?

I know this for a couple reasons

1. I was involved with Beta and it was never mentioned by Seble. It was stated there was no change to the engine. When EEs were brought up, Seble said he intentionally left them alone... for now.
2. The preferences were basically random (I know people hate that word) in the beginning. They were tweaked over time when it showed they didn't make much sense (like more people wanting rebuild vs success).
3. They've had to retweak preferences after Beta including having more top 100 guys want to sign late
4. This was a massive change and there wasn't much forethought into secondary and tertiary impacts. We've seen that quite a bit.

So I guess I don't KNOW this. But I'm 99.99% sure.

I'm only asking because people keep throwing "random" out there. It's a program. It runs the numbers, with whatever modifiers, and decides yes/no. It's not random. So, if experienced users are claiming "random" in earnest(which I don't believe and that's one reason why they hate on me about EE), I'm forced to believe they're missing something.

Well, SOMETHING is deciding what happens. This is probably determined by some sort of input that sets the parameters and then has a RNG create the outcome.

It's like, how do SIMs determine who to go for during recruiting? Is it random? Seems pretty random to me. But there's obviously something that's making these decisions for them so you could say it's not random.

I think you could argue most things in this game are random and not random at the same time. Both sides are correct to an extent.

It seems like the number of strong players graduating might have an impact too. This are only 64(?) draft spots, so it seems like a strong senior class could help push down some fringe EEs that could/would go in other years.

I have 3 players on my Washington team that keep moving back and forth from on the fence and likely going. Trying to find any loophole I can to make them stay. Thanks for all the feedback.

I dont think it is random - I think people mean probabilistic when they say that.

I think the chances of a guy going EE are affected by

1. the stuff that controls how he is listed on the Big Board
2. some internal characteristic of the player that influences propensity to leave early
3. a random number generator that in effect rolls the dice given those parameters

dont know this, but this accords with what developers said in the past about EEs and related stuff and seems to fit my experience

#2 is what I'm talking about. Maybe it's some "hidden" number, there's always been talk about that in HBD regarding a number of outcomes, or maybe something has been missed. I'm not a hidden number believer.

Like a "near home" guy is more likely to stay or "wants rebuild" is more likely to leave.

Another factor is how many players a team has already lost due to graduation and EE's.

I've seen some guys stay that I never would have believed would stay only to discover the team already had lost its allotment of players (someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think you can't lose more than five players to graduation & EE - excluding 1 year transfers and walk-ons).

If a guy like that stays then I think the engine just moves to the next guy on the list as a replacement.

Posted by possumfiend on 3/16/2017 10:28:00 AM (view original):
Another factor is how many players a team has already lost due to graduation and EE's.

I've seen some guys stay that I never would have believed would stay only to discover the team already had lost its allotment of players (someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think you can't lose more than five players to graduation & EE - excluding 1 year transfers and walk-ons).

If a guy like that stays then I think the engine just moves to the next guy on the list as a replacement.

The limit per season is 6 (six) players leaving due to graduation, EEs, and transfers (excluding 1 yr SR recruited the previous season and walk-ons).

the 6 player rule - as summarized above - for sure applies.